


so much spring

by icicaille



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sheep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27570424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille/pseuds/icicaille
Summary: In the half-year since their return, Francis had become aloof, impassive, withdrawn. There was no logic to this strange metamorphosis. At Greenhithe, Francis had promised to look after him. Had told James: Come find me. Yet Francis had never been further out of reach.On a cold spring day in 1849, Francis drops everything and flees London for his sister's farm in Ireland. James, hurt and hungry for answers, gives chase.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 70
Kudos: 194
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange





	so much spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brainyraccoons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brainyraccoons/gifts).



> Written for brainyraccoons' wonderful, tantalizing prompt: _James visits Ireland in a wild chase after Francis when the man leaves him alone in London after their return to England_. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Lil [moodboard link](https://i.ibb.co/wCz8pQZ/moodboard-full-size.png) to get you started off.)

_The sea was one thing, once; the field another. Either way,  
something got crossed, or didn’t._  
– "Brothers in Arms," Carl Phillips  
  


* * *

James was a prisoner of the cold.

Though a fire roared in the grate, his fingers were stiff with an unshakable chill. His body, which had endured some three years in unearthly temperatures, betrayed him now. It was frail, prone to bouts of shivering—altogether much reduced.

“I’m told Davies has a thousand pounds a year,” he said, getting up to stoke the fire. Outside, February’s late afternoon dusk tinted the drifting snow blue. “Quite an excellent match for Miss Parker, especially once he’s promoted to commander.”

“Indeed.” Francis fingered the rim of his teacup. “So says Lady Jane, anyway.”

“And her opinions are unassailable, of course,” James said. He poured himself a fresh cup of tea, then took a sip, watching for Francis’ answering smirk.

Francis, unmistakably elsewhere, only grunted. He had hardly said a word in the past twenty minutes, which had given James the excruciating task of enticing him with increasingly ridiculous strains of conversation. Francis was no busybody, but on the ice, he would have graced James with gentle indulgences: a smile, a murmur of laughter, a curved brow. Now, it seemed, Francis could not even bear the sight of him.

They had docked at Greenhithe a little after eight o’clock on a mild September day. An eager crowd thrummed on the pier, squinting up at the deck, shielding their eyes from early-morning sunbeams. James could not face them. He turned to starboard, to stare out at the narrow stretch of the Thames, subsumed in the muddy scent of its effluvia. In the distance, somewhere over Essex, clouds combined and recombined in snowy wisps.

A hand settled on James’ shoulder. He started, but it was only Francis, collar turned up to the wind.

“There’s a grand welcome for you,” Francis said, gesturing toward port. “Shall we?”

“I can’t bear it, Francis. The questions, the thanks, the concern, any of it.” The gangway gave a dull, thundering thump as it met the dock. “I’m sorry. I’ll wait here till they’ve dispersed.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Francis said, digging his thumb into the meat of James’ shoulder. “I’ll go down. Come find me on the dock when you’re ready.”

A seagull soared above them. As he traced its looping patterns—a white, pinwheeling rocket in a silver-blue sky—James thought that he might like to fly away just the same. Away from himself, from his own body, whose dimensions were alien to him now. This body—this novel, reconfigured entity—had been reborn on the ice. It had been nourished, finally, after a lifetime of subsistence, and it wanted things that could not be. Had come to expect them as though they were easy, ordinary, like tea and eggs at breakfast.

“Thank you, Francis.”

“Whatever burden you are carrying, James, know that I will shoulder it with you. You need only share it with me. Speak truthfully, hm?”

James’ throat tightened unaccountably as Francis gave him a final pat and strode away toward the gangplank.

Thereafter, days and weeks accreted and multiplied into months, which spun forward indistinctly. Through it all, James’ diary was populated by a crush of social engagements: dinners at his club, invitations to the theatre, tea with lords and ladies, where he employed as much charm was needed to reassure present company that he was cheerful and well.

But James was neither. He was despairing, bereft of good health and employment and the lodestar he had followed for eight hundred Arctic miles.

Still, he set his clock by tea with Francis—a standing engagement every Thursday at four, held in the cramped but tidy Bloomsbury sitting room James let from a kindly widow. He counted down the hours between their meetings with great anxiety. On Thursdays, he often laid in bed until well after noon, febrile with hope that this time, _this_ time, things would be different. In the half-year since their return, Francis had become aloof, impassive, withdrawn. It was an unsettling reproduction of wardroom dinners aboard _Terror_ while Sir John lived; once more, Francis treated James with the tepid indifference one would grant a fly that refused to capitulate to the swatter. That they had practically shared a single soul on the ice did not seem to matter.

For his part, James felt as though he had suffered a true bereavement. There was no logic to this strange metamorphosis. At Greenhithe, Francis had promised to look after him. Had told James: _Come find me_.

Yet Francis had never been further out of reach.

The more Francis retreated inward, the more James became increasingly absorbed into Francis’ wordlessness, as though those near-silent hours leeched him of some indispensable, constitutive part. James could not suppress the urge to fill the space with talk, but he was lesser for it. Diminished. Francis’ reticence obsessed him. He seized upon every reply Francis uttered with a pathetic joy, buoyed by the hope that it signaled Francis’ resurrection, that the Francis he knew— _his_ Francis—would return to him soon.

James crossed one leg over another and rested his hands upon his knee, scrutinizing the sitting room. Perhaps it was not to Francis’ liking, and Francis preferred to meet elsewhere. But the room was quite pleasant, with its cream damask curtains and wine-colored carpet ribboned in the Persian style. Between their chairs sat a marble fireplace ornamented with a French time-piece, around which were studded a collection of alabaster urns and brass lamps.

No, evidently it was the company alone that disturbed.

That afternoon, James had attempted to discuss, respectively, the weather, the latest rubbish put forth by the _Times_ , and the Admiralty’s umbrage at Francis’ early retirement. None proved sufficient bait to lure Francis’ good humor out.

“And how is our dear Lady Jane?” James tried.

Francis shrugged, a half-aborted flick of his shoulders. “Well enough.”

James chewed his tongue, considering. Perhaps he could repay some of the honesty Francis had shown him up north. “And are you well, Francis?” he asked. “Only you seem—ah—a bit ill at ease, I suppose.”

“Perfectly fine,” Francis said, brow furrowed. “And you? Have you been deemed fit for duty yet?”

Upon their return, a naval surgeon had examined James and pronounced him “enfeebled,” which yielded a prompt medical discharge. The diagnosis was humiliating, of course, but privately James was glad of the reprieve, debilitated in body and spirit as he was. He could not hope to captain a ship if he was rendered useless by a sprinkling of English snow. “I’m told I should give it six months, give or take.”

“Have Hay or Milne spoken to you about a posting?”

“I haven’t heard a word from them.” In truth, James did not know if he wished to return to service. The command that doubtless awaited him seemed nothing more than an ill-fitting glove now.

Francis nodded, said nothing.

The clock on the mantle chimed to mark the quarter-hour.

James dug his thumbnails into his palms, then squeezed until he was certain they would leave pale etchings. “I _have_ heard, however, that Milne’s wife has been quite friendly with Hay as of late, and he—”

“James.” Francis’ jaw had set in a stern line. “Must we? I have no tongue for gossip. You know that.”

“Well, neither do I!” James said, feeling quite waylaid. “Not anymore. I merely—”

“Then why do you persist in heaping it upon me every time I visit? Conversing about nothing else? I had thought—” Francis faltered. Then, very quietly, almost to himself, he said, “I fear we may not have much in common.”

The shock of it ripped through James. A sniper’s unerring shot. He was adrift, suddenly—the lines tethering him to shore had been snapped, and he could only protect himself through a lashing of his own. “And how fares Miss Cracroft? Do you and she have much in common?”

Miss Cracroft had been there to greet them at Greenhithe. When James had descended the gangplank, imploring God to grant him a speck of anonymity in the crowd, he had noticed her instantly; she and her aunt were gathered in close to Francis, the three of them discoursing in low tones. James had meant to join them, offer his most sincere condolences for Sir John, but Miss Cracroft was bestowing upon Francis such a look of unadulterated affection that James had felt himself wither where he stood. Instead, he had drawn an etiolated breath and hurried after Dundy, who stood at the edge of the dock, beckoning to him. From then on, the name _Miss Cracroft_ only came to mind when James sought to punish himself, like a slow-rotting molar that stung only when prodded.

Francis looked up at him with a dismal expression. “I have not visited with Miss Cracroft in some time, so I could not say.”

“I see,” James said, letting the aggravation sit behind his teeth. “Well, please give her my regards when next you do.” He did not begrudge Francis the pursuit, but perjury of this kind was insupportable after all they had shared.

During those long days on the shale, he and Francis could discern the color of each other’s thoughts with a glance, nod, a brief touch on the forearm. It was a closeness unlike anything James had ever known. A solitary green shoot that sprouted between the unending grey cracks, indescribable and unlooked-for. Some rare species of arctic flora, perhaps, that could not survive in temperate weather, leaving room for an English rose—one of good breeding and considerable income—to bloom in its stead.

They sat in an uneasy quiet until James made his excuses. He was terribly sorry to have mixed the dates up in his diary, he told Francis, wringing his hands, but he was due for dinner with Dundy and the others at their club in just half an hour’s time. Francis assured James that he understood, that it was no bother at all, and took his leave straightaway. He did not even have the good grace to appear slighted.

Henceforth, James seldom passed two consecutive evenings in the comfort of his rooms. Heartsick, he hunted diversions in all crevices of London society: every club, pub, and tearoom he and his fellows could find in the city directories, frittering away the annuity William had set up for him. If he could not jettison his sorrows at sea, he figured, drowning them in drink would do.

But his body, no longer young and supple, revolted. Most mornings were spent kneeling before the chamber pot and swigging vinegar as his stomach churned, then retiring to bed to nurse his splitting headache.

Tea and cold meats at lunch generally roused James from his stupor. By early evening, emboldened by the promise of further roistering, he leapt from his bed and redressed himself in luxury: silk cravats, fur-trimmed frock coats, glossy black boots. He tossed his hair in the looking glass and tugged the corners of his lips up into a smile. His likeness grinned back at him, translucent in its artifice, but he shook himself— _Steady on, James_ —and dashed out the door, into the dark.

Wherever they ventured—he, Dundy, Ned Charlewood, John Boyd—there was ale and spirits enough for thrice the number of their little band. On particularly lonely nights, James permitted tavern girls to sit in his lap; they did not stir him in the least, but he craved the primitive comforts of hot breath in his ear and fleshy arms around his neck. Vaguely, he supposed he ought to be ashamed at his carousing, which suited a newly promoted lieutenant far more than it did a seasoned captain nearing forty. From time to time he imagined the disapproving slant of Francis’ mouth, which grew sterner with every spilled drink and upended chair.

No doubt Francis heard all about it. The circle of Royal Navy command in London was rather small, after all—a coterie of sorts, as much as they all squabbled and sniped at each other.

Thus it did not come as a terrible surprise when, one Thursday in March, Francis leaned back in James’ armchair and said, “Bird tells me you have been rather riotous with Le Vesconte and the like lately.”

Their visits had iced over with the winter snow. Now, James found he anticipated the toothsome way they bit into him, like the sweet sting of a harassed bruise. “So you’ve asked Bird to keep an eye on me, I see.” The judgment was deserved, but he bristled all the same.

“Of course not. But you know how our set talks.”

“I do,” James said. “Though I am surprised to hear you entertain it. Does it bother you, how I spend my back-pay and my pension?”

Francis shook his head. With it, all the energy seemed to pour out of him, like an upset glass of water.

James pressed on; the bruise of their dissension throbbed. “You are many things, Francis, but subtle is not among them. I know your censure when I see it. What vexes you, precisely? That I have dared to exercise what little youth remains to me, rather than holing up like some sad mole-rat who shrivels in the sunlight?”

“ _James_ ,” Francis said, in a grave tone that advised James to tread carefully.

“You say you have spoken to Bird about me? Well, I spoke to Ross when we chanced upon each other at Somerset House the other day, and he told me you hardly leave the house! What kind of life are you carving out for yourself, Francis? Why do you not marry the lady and be done with it?” A trickle of sweat wet the inside of James’ shirt collar. The bruise had never seeped this deep into tissue before—ugly, mottled swirls of yellow-purple that lit up at the lightest touch.

Yet Francis did not return the volley. He only closed his eyes and bowed his head and said, “I do not understand you, James.”

“I confess I do not understand you either,” James said. “But surely this is all a bit of silliness, eh? Not worth a row?” A row was nothing. A row could be withstood by passing acquaintances. What they teetered on the edge of was far worse, though already it seemed eroded beyond repair.

“I am sorry, James. I am very tired. Let us put a stopper on it for now, hm? Please, do not worry on my account.” Francis sighed. “I think I had better go.”

James stood as a matter of decorum. It would not do to appear agitated, although at present he thought his heart might very well crumble into dust the second Francis left. “Until next Thursday,” he said, injecting as much cheer as he was able.

Francis nodded at him and stepped over the threshold. There he paused, posture pulled taught, hand curled into a fist; James could see, even under Francis’ coat, the way his shoulders drew together expectantly.

James did not dare to breathe. He knew Francis, knew what Francis looked like when he was steeling himself to forge ahead, to plunge into some boundless unknown. James murmured Francis’ name very softly, as though Francis were a spooked deer in need of taming.

But Francis only sighed again—a slow, enervate rise and fall of his shoulders—and proceeded through the doorway, onto the street, where a brisk breeze rippled the tail of his coat.

* * *

Francis did not appear the following week.

Ordinarily Francis was as punctual as any schoolmistress, so when James wrested his pocket watch from his waistcoat and found that it was ticking at fifteen past the hour, a sense of consternation came over him. A possibility he soundly rejected. Refused, indeed, to entertain.

Soon the mantel clock chimed to mark the half hour. Still Francis was absent.

James sought to busy himself by pouring their tea, but his nervous hands overturned a cup, staining the tablecloth the color of burnt wood. “You absolute imbecile.” He fetched a rag from the cupboard and began to scrub furiously at the splatters. “Look what you’ve done.”

And he had done it, hadn’t he? Driven Francis away with his endless needling and chattering. His nose prickled.

When five o’clock tolled, James cleared away the tea set. Francis was not coming, and he had not even bothered to send his regrets.

The evening passed in a haze. James could not stomach food or drink, and he did not retire to bed until well past midnight. His slumber was fractured and uneasy, flecked with peculiar and fantastical dreams. He awoke bleary-eyed and foggy-headed but unthinking; the night had made a sieve of memory, and the morning washed over him peacefully, like lazy waves lapping at the shore. Then he recalled Francis’ absence and snapped at once into wakefulness.

Over kedgeree, which tasted dull and chalky in his mouth, James drafted and redrafted and rehearsed his lines. _Your behavior is most unbecoming, Francis_ was laced too thickly with acridity; _I will leave you to your impending matrimony and bother you no longer_ too plainly solicited pity. _I understand if you no longer wish for my friendship, for we are both very much altered by what we have seen_ seemed right—it was generous and dispassionate and left Francis a neat egress.

When James was satisfied with the approximate dimensions of his role, he put on his warmest coat and set out for Sir James Ross’ house. He resolved to walk the whole distance even though some eight miles lay between Blackheath and Bloomsbury, an effort that would leave him tired and aching. Suitable penance, he thought, for _the best walker in the service_.

His course was southeast—through Holborn, past St. Paul’s, across Blackfriars into Southwark, through the Bermondsey slums. At last he entered Greenwich Park, whose lawns were dry and bleached from the winter frost. Nothing green had grown there in some time.

James halted in front of the seamen’s hospital and peered up at the observatory, shivering. The cold air blistered his skin and numbed his limbs. Though March was half gone, the promise of spring was premature; no kiss of afternoon warmth would be found today. He wrapped himself tighter into his coat and hiked up the heath, gritting his teeth when his legs protested, then turned onto Eliot Place.

Number two was a fine house—spacious at four floors, attractively modern in its façade. James rapped on the door and willed his heart to temper the wild pace of its beating. After a beat, a young, rosy-cheeked footman appeared.

“Yes, good afternoon,” James said, clearing his throat. “Captain James Fitzjames, lately of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition. I desire to speak to Captain Crozier. Is he in?”

“No, Captain Fitzjames,” the footman said. He could not have been more than twenty. “He departed early this morning.”

James frowned. “Departed? Will he be back before dinner?”

“I’m afraid not. That is to say, Captain Crozier decamped with his trunk just before seven and took a cab to Euston Station. I believe he intended to travel to Holyhead and board a steam packet from there.”

“Where in God’s name is he going?” James said, wrestling with all his most brutish instincts to keep his tone level. “No matter. Is Sir James in? I would speak with him about Captain Crozier’s whereabouts.”

“Sir James and Lady Ann also quit London this morning for Aston Abbotts, Captain. They will not be back for a fortnight at least.”

James could not bear a fortnight in the dark. His hands twitched where they lay, impotent, at his sides. “That will not do. I must speak to Captain Crozier. It is a matter of grave urgency.”

When the footman showed no sign of acceding, James shrouded himself in his most charming manner and doffed his hat, letting the sunlight illumine his freshly curled hair. “Mr., ah—?”

“Edwards.”

“Mr. Edwards. My good man. I served as Captain Crozier’s second on the Franklin expedition, and one may rightly declare that he is my dearest brother-in-arms. But he is a little older, however, getting on in years, and therefore neglected—quite innocently, of course—to send me a note mentioning his destination.” Here James smiled, showing all his teeth. “If you would be so good as to copy down the address for me from Sir James’ diary? In fact, you may write to Sir James, if you like, and tell him I called. He is an old comrade and should be glad to hear from me.”

Edwards sighed. “Very well, Captain Fitzjames.” He vanished into the house and emerged with a folded page, which he passed to James. “Here you are.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” James said, inclining his head. “I am most grateful.” He unfolded the page with trembling hands.

_Dunhill Farm  
Hillsborough  
Co. Down_

“Good Christ,” James muttered, striding down the street. “A farm! In Ireland! Really, Francis.” Sweat broke out on his forehead and under his arms, chilling him to the bone. He would never make the eight miles home.

As the cab rattled down toward the Thames, James stared down at the paper in his lap, already stained from his damp palms, folded and unfolded so many times it was wrinkled irreparably.

It was unlike Francis to cut and run. In their years together, Francis had never shrank from any hardship, never applied the strategist’s slick ingenuity to any predicament. He had always been unfailingly, appallingly honest in spite of all the trouble it caused. In fact, Francis was the most sensible, forthright man James had ever met, a man who made his wants known by speaking them aloud.

Yet it was Francis’ silence that spoke now, which James supposed he should construe as an unspoken parting of ways. If Francis had meant for James to call on him in Ireland, surely he would have offered up his address. It was a sign—indisputably so—that James ought to leave him be.

James worried at his cuticles with the nail of his index finger and rested his forehead against the dusty cab window. He desired nothing more than to sleep dreamlessly forever.

When they rolled to a halt before a throng of passersby on Cannon Street, James hefted his cane aloft and pushed the roof door open with the tip of it. “Cubitt Street, number seven, if you please,” he called to the driver.

Dundy greeted James at the door himself.

“Landlady off duty today, old boy?” James said, knocking his mud-crusted boots against the door jamb.

“Indeed,” Dundy said, sweeping back inside. “Gone to visit her sister in Surrey.”

Once they had adjourned to the sitting room, James draped himself across the chaise in an ungainly sprawl—a liberty he would only exercise on account of their history—and sighed.

Dundy took the armchair beside him. “What is it, Jas? I had thought to see you here much later this evening, before we cleared out to Pall Mall.”

“Francis has gone,” James said. He imagined he must sound awfully like a maiden who’d been jilted by her wayward lover, which made him first blush, then inwardly reprimand himself. “To Ireland, I mean. This morning.”

“Family business?”

“I don’t believe so. He was—I—we had quarreled just yesterday, you see, and I fear—well.”

“Francis Crozier packed his bags and fled to Ireland because you _quarreled_?”

“ _Dundy_ , please!” James groaned into his hands. “Something is amiss. He did not even think to inform me, and you know how often we have seen each other in months past. How—well—close we have been.”

“I see,” Dundy said, crossing his legs.

James had never offered up the true shape of it, but surely Dundy knew how deep James’ affections for Francis ran. He and Dundy were closer than brothers—a true sort of brothers, twins, who were of the same mind in practically everything. Not like Francis, whose pieces slotted in precisely where James lacked.

Dundy glided through life as though it were a frozen pond and he the bearer of a sturdy pair of skates. He was affable, unconcerned, real and solid where James was gossamer in his pretenses. They shared the same penchant for mischief and theatre, the same breezy laughter, even the same bed at times on _Clio_. With another, it would have been a Rubicon; with Dundy, it was only ever a bit of fun—they were too much the same to be anything else.

“Does he…” Dundy made a vague, expansive gesture.

“No,” James said, with a smile that died before it reached his eyes. “How could he, if he hated the sight of me so much he was obliged to bloody leave England?”

“Oh, James.”

“Christ, yes, I _know_. Mortifying, isn’t it.”

“And you’ve had no word from him? None at all? No clue where he’s run off to?”

“There’s the thing.” James schooled his features into something approaching sheepishness. “I may have pilfered, in a manner of speaking, his address from Ross’ footman not an hour ago. A farm in County Down! It beggars belief, I tell you.”

“You old devil. So it’s off to Ireland, then?”

“Well, I have the blasted address, but I cannot _go_! Do you think Francis, of all men, would look kindly upon my bedraggled figure darkening his doorstep when he gave me no sign that such a visit would be welcome? For God’s sake, we both know what Francis was like once. He’d have my hide.”

“Jas, you could never look bedraggled.” Dundy stretched out and patted James’ knee. “If Francis cares for you at all, which I know damn well he does, then he owes you a proper farewell, eh? And perhaps it really was family business. Some dire accident that demanded Francis bugger off in the middle of the night.”

“I suppose so,” James said. “So you would if Francis were your Miss Turner? Truly?” He rearranged himself on the chaise and tipped his face up toward Dundy, seeking, he supposed, some kind of assurance there. Scarcely believing he had said all of it, finally, out loud.

“Miss Turner is three chaperoned teas away from granting me her hand in marriage,” Dundy said, “so you’d better get accustomed to calling her Mrs. Le Vesconte. And yes, I would if it were my Miss Turner run off.”

“My, my. Whatever shall I do without you? Live out my days in solitary bachelorhood, while you totter around Buckinghamshire with Mrs. Le Vesconte and your nine children?” James affected his most theatrical, put-upon sigh. “You must promise to care for me in my dotage. You, Ned, John, and your wives shall split equal liability for my well-being.”

Matrimony. That horrid, horrid word for men of James’ sort. Yet his dearest comrades were all bound up in it: Dundy to Miss Turner, Ned to Sarah, John to Cordelia. James would never know the bliss of a good match, a steady companion whom one could kiss in the open air, under the sun. He would remain condemned to the cold, dark street, perched on his toes as he peered through glazed windows for a glimpse at this elusive thing called _happiness_.

Dundy tossed a remorseful glance in his vicinity. “Listen to me, Jas. I speak to you as your old and most cherished friend, with whom you have shared everything a body and a mind can.”

“Dear _God_ , what sanctimonious torture am I due for now?”

“I say, as your old and most cherished friend, hush.” Dundy held up a hand that brooked little argument. “I have never mentioned this because I did not wish to embarrass or condescend to you. But when you were very ill, back there—” A heavy grief seemed to settle over him. “Francis was beside himself. As was I, of course, but he was tormented. Would have done anything for you. Would have taken your pain, wholly, as his own burden if it were possible. You are very close to his heart, Jas. I do not know if he is of the persuasion, but you do yourself a great disservice if you allow him to sever your friendship over some trifle. And, simply put, I cannot bear to see you moon over this fellow a moment more, so if nothing else, go for your old shipmate’s sake.”

“Quite a sermon,” James murmured, blinking.

He recalled the circumstances of his illness faintly—shimmering ripples across the vast ocean of memory. _What can I do?_ Francis had asked, again and again, while James writhed on his cot, bathed in days-old sweat. James remembered weeping, crying out, begging for mercy, but he did not remember the pain, not truly. It was Francis—only Francis, the sound and smell and look of him—who surfaced in these hazy impressions.

It was Francis to whom his heart answered.

Providence had snatched James from scurvy’s hungry jaws, and here he was, repaying his good fortune with cowardice. “I’m afraid I will not be joining you tonight, for I’ve affairs to put in order,” he said, and all at once some tortuous knot in his chest unsnarled itself.

“I’ve heard it’s damnably cold in Ireland this time of year,” Dundy said. His smile was pleased and proud. “Do take care, all right? You’ve only just recovered.”

James nodded. “Spring must break soon,” he said. “It always does.”

* * *

Two weeks later, James’ hired coach deposited him in Hillsborough’s town square just after four o’clock in the afternoon. He had been traveling for two full days—ten hours from London to Holyhead, four on the steamer to Dublin, two on the train from Dublin to Cavan, then three from Cavan to Dunmurry, where he’d sought out a coach among the horde loitering outside the station. When James had given the name of Dunhill Farm, the driver had shaken his head and said he could only go as far as Hillsborough, which left James in search of his sixth conveyance to this blasted place. Now, beset by hunger and exhaustion, he was beginning to regret coming at all. “Oh, good grief,” he said aloud, rubbing at his stiff neck, and strode off toward the farmer’s cart parked at the edge of the square.

Jouncing along the dirt roads, James found that at last he had time for trepidation, which had heretofore been eclipsed by all manner of bodily discomforts and petty irritations. His thoughts spun in sundry directions, all of them calamitous, and a queasy sensation began to ferment in his belly.

“Dunhill’s up there,” the driver called from above, as the cart ground to a halt.

“Much obliged,” James replied. He alighted and collected his trunk.

A hundred yards ahead of him lay a small stone house girdled by a belt of fencing. Beyond the stone posts, sheep grazed and roamed in a verdant pasture that sat at the foot of a series of sprawling hills.

James drew in a preparatory breath and made his way down the path, hat under his arm. Dust swirled under his boots. When he had reached the stone slab porch, he made to knock, but his hand trembled violently and fell to his side—a dead, useless thing.

“For God’s sake, man,” he said, under his breath, and gave a mighty thump.

The door did not open after one minute had fluttered by, two, three, and James thought he might be sick all over the stone.

But then, suddenly, there was Francis in the doorway.

James sprung back at the astonishment in Francis’ expression and nearly overturned the trunk beside him. He placed a steadying hand atop it and said, smoothing out all the jagged edges in his voice, “Hello, Francis.”

Francis sought his own anchor in the doorjamb, which he leaned upon heavily, then passed a hand over his face. “Why have you come?”

James could have laughed at his own idiotic presumption. So it was true—he was not welcome here. Francis did not miss him or covet his company.

He affixed a hollow smile to his lips and waved an idle hand. “Oh, Sir James was kind enough to tell me where you’d gone, and as I was in need of a little holiday myself, I thought, why not pay dear Francis a visit? Now, be a good fellow and let me take off my boots. My heels are positively ground to the bone.”

Francis gaped at him.

“Or, ah, shall I go,” James said, faltering. “I can if you’d like. I see you are occupied presently.”

At this Francis gave a minute shake of his head. “No, no. Come in.” He stepped back into the house.

Inside, there was stone everywhere James turned. The floor was made of the same mudstone that formed the front porch, and the walls were constituted of roughly stacked slabs. Two wooden rocking chairs and a tufted wingback chair were clustered close to the hearth cut into the back wall, where a fire roared, breathing feeling back into James’ chilled fingers.

Francis sank into the wingback. “This is quite a surprise, James,” he said into his hands. “I had not expected to see you here.”

Searching for a suitable corner of the room to stow his trunk, James said, lightly, “Well, I hope my presence is not too distressing. You must forgive the intrusion.”

“This house belongs to my sister, you know. Margaret.”

“Ah. So she requested your assistance with some pressing matter, was that it?” James asked, calmed by the simple, irrefutable logic. Francis was a dutiful brother who would come when called—nothing more to it. “Some complication from the blight she could not manage alone?”

Francis looked up at him with a wry lift of his brow. “This farm deals in sheep, James, not potatoes.” More soberly: “I had not heard from Margaret in some time before this. Our last letters were in ’45, while I was in Florence.”

All at once James’ flimsy illusion collapsed on itself. “Oh, Francis, why do you insist on being damn opaque!” He had begun to grow uncomfortably heated under his traveling cloak.

“James, really, I must—”

The door flew open.

At the threshold stood a woman, forty or so, and a young girl, no more than nine or ten. The woman’s face was remarkable—a replication, fashioned by the same sculptor, of a likeness that frequented James’ nightly imaginings. In her face, he spied Francis’ chin, his low-sloping nose, the half-moons under his eyes that exuded an air of perennial weariness. The girl had them, too, but muddied, as though they had been washed away and redrawn.

“Frank?” The woman turned to Francis with questing eyes, clutching the girl’s shoulder.

Francis sighed lowly, as though it had been scraped out of him. “Margaret, Captain Fitzjames will be boarding with us tonight.”

The woman’s—Margaret’s—hold loosened. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, and inclined her head. “Captain Fitzjames, this is Sarah, my daughter.”

“A pleasure, ma’am. Francis has, ah, mentioned me?”

“Quite often. Just last night he was regaling us with the tale of your daring dive into the Mersey,” Margaret said, which earned a groan from Francis’ corner of the room.

The whole thing was pure lunacy. James stole a glance at Francis, who was determined, it seemed, to steer clear of James’ scrutiny and would not look at him. _You have thought of me, then_? he would ask, were they alone.

With a sigh, he turned to Sarah and paid her a sweeping bow. “And we mustn’t forget Miss Sarah. Enchanted.”

Sarah flushed and hid her face in her mother’s skirts.

“Ah, don’t mind her,” Margaret said, patting Sarah’s head. “She’s not used to handsome sea captains coming to call.”

When Sarah peeked out from under the wool pleats, James winked at her. “Not even your uncle Francis?”

“Christ almighty! Perish the thought.” Margaret hefted James’ trunk into her arms and carried it into an adjoining bedroom. Her voice drifted from afar. “How long do you intend to stay, Captain Fitzjames? It is rather close quarters in here, but you’re welcome as long as you’d like.”

“I have—” James began before Francis cut in.

“Just the one night, Margaret,” Francis called. He looked at James, admonishment in his eyes, and put a finger to his lips. “We will discuss it later.”

“Quite a lot of subterfuge you’re employing, Francis, and I haven’t the faintest as to why,” James said, very much piqued. He resumed his pacing. The ache in his neck had not lessened any, only burrowed deeper into the muscle—and lower, too, threading down his spine, through his hips. Yet he dared not take either of the chairs next to Francis’, which presupposed more familiarity than lay between them at present.

“What is it?” Francis said.

James paused in front of the hearth. “I don’t take your meaning.”

“You are agitated.”

“Naturally I am agitated, Francis! I have traveled for nearly forty-eight hours to find—well, to get here. We may bicker over my reasoning all you like in due course, but by _God_ , I am so very tired.”

“Well, why did you not say so,” Francis muttered, rising out of his chair. “Come. Sarah will sleep with her mother tonight.”

James trailed him to a small room at the south end of the house. Girlish playthings littered the dressing table: homespun yarn dolls, a single tarnished tin soldier, a dish of glass marbles, a miniature tea set. Bracketed between two windows was a mahogany four-poster thankfully large enough to accommodate a man of James’ height.

Francis fussed with the linens while James inspected the tea set.

“Do your knees pain you much?”

James did not know when he had fallen on the shale during their walk out: one interminable day when the sun never rose or set, only burned all the tender skin it could assail. After they had laid him in the boat, James had taken inventory of himself and discovered a curious wetness trickling down his shins. He had been attempting to untuck his trouser legs from his boots when Francis leaned over the gunwale. _Are you hurt?_ Francis had asked, grim. _It’s nothing. Think I spilled water from the canteen or—_ But Francis had lent his own hands and rolled up James’ trousers to find the skin of both knees black with bruising. _Oh, James_ , Francis had said, stroking James’ left kneecap with his thumb. James had smiled up at Francis, with his raw, bleeding gums and cracked lips, and repeated, choking on his own spittle, _It’s nothing._

“They’re all right. Just sore from the sitting.”

“Don’t overtax yourself is all, hm?”

Oh, the cheek of that man. James spun on his heel, affronted. “How very kind of you, Francis, to show some care for my person after all this time!”

When the gentle mien Francis wore shuttered into something tense, discomfited, James half-wished he could ingest the words back into himself. He had been uncharitable; his accusation was unbecoming of a gentleman. But Francis could not play at kindness or consideration after what he’d done.

The wounds to James’ heart—a frail, pitiful thing that had never hardened itself to loneliness the way it ought to—troubled James more than any old injuries. Those he could weather like the good soldier he was.

“I am always concerned for your health and happiness,” Francis said, ducking his head. “If you are hurting, I would know.”

“Yet you treat me as if—” _As if I am nothing to you_. James stopped, chagrined by the excessive sentimentality in his speech, and swallowed. Though he still sought to salvage the tatters of their friendship, he could not be candid. Not properly. What remained of Francis’ regard for him was too precious, and Francis—who followed a straight and narrow course in all things—would surely recoil in disgust if he suspected even a trace of the truth. “No matter. Is your Miss Cracroft not missing you?”

The patchwork quilt Francis had flung across the bed billowed in the air for an instant, then fell neatly across its breadth. He pulled its ends taut and smoothed out the crinkles. “She is not _my_ Miss Cracroft, James. I have not and _will_ not put a third proposal to her. I hope we may not speak of this again.” Present in Francis’ tone was all the resounding authority of a captain’s quarterdeck order.

James floundered for a bedpost and leaned his weight against it. “I see.” The breath had been fair punched out of him. “But why ever not?” he asked, with as much sincerity as he could summon.

Francis straightened and clasped his hands behind his back— the posture of a man who had been wounded and sought to disguise it. “It is a private matter. A decision reached after much deliberation, which I have no intention of reneging. That is all.”

“Do you not love her? Christ, Francis, it was plain as day how much you longed for her up there,” James said, fiercely. He knew a look of regret when he saw it, and Miss Cracroft had inhabited that very thing on the dock at Greenhithe. She would have Francis in an instant. “Why deny yourself this? There is no virtue in abnegation, man! We _lived_ , for God’s sake, and we must go on living for those who did not.”

Francis’ lips parted in a snarl.

Then a shout rang out from the sitting room. “Frank! Fetch the potatoes for dinner!”

Francis leveled a thunderous look at James that pinned him in place, made him squirm as though he were a feeble little insect flayed open and found wanting. “No more, James.”

Dinner that evening was a delicate affair. Francis seldom interjected, so James spoke enough for two: meditations on new exhibitions from Millais and Rossetti, accounts of his adventures in Greece and Syria, the latest London fashions. By the time they had put away their stew and colcannon, the store of James’ stories had been emptied out.

“How did you come by this place?” he asked, as Margaret cleared away their plates and laid out the tea set.

“When Sarah was a wee girl, about six years ago, her father took ill from cholera. We lived in Dublin at the time, and he had done nicely for himself as a solicitor. But he succumbed within a matter of weeks, God rest his soul, and I was at loose ends. George—our eldest brother—had just inherited this place from some great-uncle of ours who collected rent on it, and he reckoned I needed the money more than he did as a solicitor himself. I thought about letting the farm, but—” She shrugged. “Might as well while away the time with something, eh? I like it here. It’s quiet and untroubled. So different to city life. And we manage well for ourselves, don’t we?” She looked at Sarah, who smiled shyly. “Sarah goes to a hedge school every Tuesday and Thursday in the next valley over. I hire a hand or two most days, and a shepherd during lambing season; still, Frank coming up here is a great help. A farm’s a beautiful thing—all those living things growing, begetting more life—but it’s hard work, make no mistake.”

After they had drunk their tea, James volunteered himself for the washing up—a duty he had not performed in many years, not since he was a fresh-faced middie. Margaret and Sarah bid him good night and adjourned to their room; Francis lingered as James bent over the hearth and fiddled with the kindling.

James paid him no mind, only filled up the tub once the water had heated and carried it over to the sink.

“James, I have been thinking,” Francis said, idly drumming his knuckles against the table. “I had told James Ross to send word to your rooms that morning, which I had hoped you would receive without delay. It is difficult for me to imagine that my departure disturbed you. You have your friends and your clubs, and so I thought—well, I thought it would all be no great loss where you are concerned.”

Applying a ferocious pressure to the sponge, James scrubbed at the plates and cups and forks until his fingers had numbed in the hot water.

This false humility chafed at him. Francis knew very well how dearly James prized their friendship, the comfort of Francis’ confidence, the secrets Francis guarded for him. If Francis wished to cloak his cruelty in diffidence, James would respond in kind. “It was only a sudden shock, Francis, don’t trouble yourself. You’re entirely correct. I’d always had to miss Lady Charlotte Cooper’s Thursday whist games—which Dundy has told me are quite the thing—on account of our meetings, so I am glad to have the afternoon free with the spring season underway.”

James cleared his throat, which had gone dry and rough at an untruth it could not quite swallow down. He would rather spit it out, kneel at Francis’ feet, beg Francis to promise he would never leave again. “In any case, I am certain the Irish country air has done you much good,” he said, observing, from his periphery, the way Francis seemed to deflate, sink into himself.

“Very well,” Francis said. “I am glad we understand each other.” He offered James a wan smile. “Goodnight.”

James renewed his scrubbing at the stew pot. “Goodnight, Francis.”

He had imagined, during his travels across land and sea, the welcome he would enjoy here. How Francis would be much overcome, rendered speechless, perhaps, at this plain proof of James’ devotion. Invite James back into his confidence and the easy camaraderie they had once shared.

It was nothing more than a chimera. A silly schoolboy’s fantasy. Tomorrow, James would say his farewells and burden Francis Crozier no longer.

* * *

At half-past seven the next morning, Francis appeared in James’ borrowed bedroom and inquired, quite timidly, if James would help him trim the horns of a ewe’s foot. Shelly hoof, he’d called it—a job that required the strength of two men. The ewe was stubborn and nearly kicked James in the teeth as he held her down, letting Francis prune the dirt away from her horns.

The effort sapped James of the resolve he’d woken with, left him yearning for another wink of sleep. He balked at the prospect of walking the five miles back into town, to say nothing of the two days’ return journey on trains teeming with squealing children.

He retired to bed and napped until noon. When he roused himself and wandered into the sitting room, Margaret was there, readying the table with bread and cheese. She assembled him a plate and said, “Why you don’t rest your bones a little more and set off tomorrow instead? Frank would be glad of your help after lunch, at least. I’ve got him repairing a span of the fence that’s gone all rotten.”

James could spare them a few hours of his labor as thanks for the repast. “Certainly,” he said, cutting into the cheese. “I’d be glad to.”

Days passed in this fashion.

At dawn, James woke to the malted smell of bread baking and the promise of breakfast at six sharp. Margaret fed them good, square meals: heaping bowls of porridge, toast with salted butter, stacks of bacon and ham, eggs from the chicken coop out back. They did not speak much—particularly Sarah, who took to laying her head on the table and dozing when Margaret’s attention waned—but a roaring fire crackled in the hearth, and the air in the sitting room was warm and comfortable. Each morning, James primed himself to pack his trunk and set off for Hillsborough, and each morning, Francis or Margaret came to him with a task that needed doing.

He couldn’t very well refuse.

Under Margaret’s tutelage, James learned to gather chicken eggs—to wash and scrub them with delicate fingers, to keep the hens’ nest boxes well-feathered with wood shavings—and to milk the placid old cow, Nellie, before the first rays of sun had melted midnight’s frost in the fields. He fed the sheepdogs, Jack and Moll, who pawed at him until he relented and allowed them to lie across his lap and lick his chin. Sometimes, after dinner, while he and Francis sat before the fire, they sidled up to his chair and nudged their wet noses against his hand, and he obliged by stroking their velvety coats until they drowsed.

With Francis, he practiced the grueling art of sheep husbandry. They drove the flock into the pasture in the mornings and, wary of foxes that slunk around the farm, herded them back into pens in the evenings. There was an awful lot of tending to be done for two dozen sheep: feeding them linseed cakes and oats and barley, cleansing the pens with burnt lime, stuffing the field shelters with straw.

Their work was wordless at first. But as the days grew longer and warmer, the cold between them receded, and soon they spoke of trifling things in clipped tones. Not of the Admiralty rumors and society canards that had stifled them in London, but of the land below and the sky above: the cirrus clouds smearing wooly patterns overhead, the storm clouds brimming with rain, the moisture in the soil, the grubs eating at the patch of browning grass up by the road.

When the sun climbed higher and higher, and their vision began to sparkle and blacken, they untied their cravats and shrugged off their waistcoats and draped them over the fence. Their shirts clung to their backs as they tramped in the dirt, dripping with sweat. James unbuttoned his to the chest, closed his eyes against the coruscating beams, and let the breeze whip about his bare skin.

Francis, whose face was liable to turn lurid shades of pink in the heat, passed him canteens of water, dampened rags to sling around his neck. James thanked him inattentively, too transfixed by the glistening triangle of skin that Francis’ open shirt unveiled. It was a secret meant only for the sheep and the fields—not for James, whose presence was incidental. Yet in these moments, the desires abraded by hurt and spite resurged to full bloom, tinting his cheeks red with blood.

On one such occasion, Francis clapped a hand to James’ shoulder—a touch once ordinary to them that had become foreign in its dormancy. “Well done,” he said, gesturing toward the crumbling stone fencepost James had salvaged.

James pushed an unruly curl behind his ear. “Easier than holystoning or climbing the ratlines. Or, for that matter, using a dipping needle,” he said, which earned a huff of laughter from Francis. “You know, you’re very able for a man who’s thus far had a rather short farming career.”

“When I was a boy, my father sent me and three of my brothers off to this very farm for a few weeks every summer,” Francis said. “To teach us industry and diligence or some such malarkey. Being that young, I could hardly do anything at all—mostly dusting and scrubbing everything in sight—and watched my brothers, who were much older and did the real labor. But it came naturally to me. I suppose I’ve always liked trying to read something that’s disinclined to give you answers: the land, the sheep, even the seasons. Much like the sea and the ice.”

It came naturally to James, too. He had always been assiduous in his duties, light on his feet and with his fingers, which made him useful wherever they had need of him. Here, no task was beneath a decorated Royal Navy captain: sweeping the yard clean, mucking out the cow shed, sealing up cracked barrels, darning torn linens. James had no men to command or ladies to charm; he was, simply, a body in its most simple and irreducible form. He ate and sweat and slept and spoke a silent farmer’s shorthand with Francis.

In some respects, he had never been so happy.

Late that evening, James was mending one of Sarah’s stockings by the fire when Francis entered the house with his collar askew and a lamb cradled in his arms. At James’ curious look, he said, “The ewe won’t mother her anymore. Have to feed her ourselves,” and sank into the wingback chair. “Heat up some milk, will you? And hand me a teapot.”

James set the milk can over the hearth while Francis arranged the lamb in his arms and rubbed down its limbs to temper nightfall’s chill. It bleated in high, cheeping tones that moved James in the way he suspected a mother might fret for her child. He glanced at Francis, whose apprehensive expression suggested he felt much the same.

“Is Margaret asleep?” Francis asked.

“She turned in about an hour ago with a headache. Took a powder for it. Sarah’s in bed, too,” James said. “Is the lamb ill?”

Francis hummed, running a finger along the lamb’s ear. “It’ll be fine, I think. Just hungry. Aren’t you, little one?” The lamb bleated again and nestled closer into Francis’ embrace.

James had not dealt much with the lambs; they were fragile and only a handful of weeks old, and therefore the province of more experienced hands on the farm. He realized, staring at the lamb in Francis’ lap, that he had never even touched one. “May I?”

“It’s only a lamb, James, not a baby,” Francis said, but he was smiling. “Go on.”

The lamb’s fleece was soft and fine—much softer and finer than any silk cravat or good wool coat in James’ possession—and James buried his fingers in its tiny, lustrous coils as he knelt beside the wingback. “That’s a good girl.” The lamb seemed to settle under his touch. He stroked between its ears and along its muzzle, then down its neck and across its loin, over and over, suspended in mesmeric contentment.

Then there was the texture of rough skin against his fingers. James flinched, but it was only Francis’ own come to join him. He looked up, mouth dry.

“Very soft,” Francis said, meeting James’ eyes. Their fingers brushed again atop the lamb’s forehead.

James nodded. He could not shape words, nor unstick them from himself. He only wanted—so badly it ached.

“James? The milk can.” Francis’ voice was low and rocky.

James rose, unsteady with hot, roiling swells of desire, and took the can off the fire. Then poured the milk into Margaret’s chipped china teapot and brought it to Francis. “Careful, bottom’s hot,” he said, maneuvering the pot so Francis could grasp the handle, right where James’ fingers were curled.

But Francis spread his fingers around the widest part of the pot, which was no doubt scalding, and said, “’S'all right.” He tilted the spout into the lamb’s mouth at a slight angle; it began to lap eagerly at the dribbles of milk, nearly flinging itself off Francis’ lap in its haste. He laughed. “Poor thing. Hungry, hm?” After it had drunk its fill, the lamb pressed its muzzle into Francis’ neck and sprawled against his chest, and soon it was fast asleep. Francis swept his hand in long, gentle strokes across the lamb’s flanks, staring down at it in wonderment.

“It’s quite fond of you, Francis,” James said, as he washed the pot in the sink. “You ought to name it. Your heir.”

The corners of Francis’ mouth twitched. “God forbid,” he said. “All the same, it is strange to be relied upon so. To feel that my touch is welcome, wanted. These are old seadog’s hands, so chewed-up by wood and rope and deadened by frost that the fingertips barely feel anything anymore. But to this little one, they are a comfort. I should think—” He paused; his eyes glittered in the firelight. “Ah, never mind.”

“What?”

“I should think I’d be glad to feel that again.” Francis shifted the lamb’s weight to his other arm, tucking its head under his chin.

James’ ears burned with knowing, and he did not reply—only wiped the pot dry and bent over the fire to stoke it a little before they parted for the night.

* * *

The first of May emerged in gauzy strips of peach and periwinkle that drifted across the horizon.

It was a Sunday, so James returned to his room after breakfast and installed himself at the narrow oak desk therein, addressing the sheaf of letters that had gone unanswered for too long.

He had written to Dundy weeks ago, soon after his arrival at the farm, to say he’d be staying for sometime—how long, precisely, he knew not, but with Francis’ choler mercifully diminished James hoped he could repair their bonds. _The handsomest man in the Royal Navy turned provincial farmer! You’ll have forgotten the taste of champagne in no time_ , Dundy had replied. _Myself and the fellows miss you terribly, but I trust you have gotten what you came for._ Occasional exchanges with Ned and John followed. James knew they were all having a grand time without him, but he found that he did not miss a whit of it: not the parties or the revelry, not the clamoring for decoration and promotion. In fact, he was of a mind to resign his commission when he returned to London. _If_ he returned.

It was Francis who had returned to him. Francis’ smiles and gentle, abashed humor were the currency of his regard, and he offered them to James freely now. James’ desire, no longer soured by the loss of Francis’ friendship, simmered at a steady heat.

 _Dearest Henry,  
With respect to the issue of my homecoming_…

James had gotten three pages down when he heard a tap on the door. “Come in.”

Francis poked his head through the doorway. “I’ve a few sheep who weren’t shorn in March and need to be, if you’d like to help.”

“Of course,” James said, setting down his pen. A conflagration of joy still flared within him when Francis requested his company.

Francis led them to the shed behind the house. “First, we must sharpen the shears,” he said, indicating the grindstone before them. Perched atop a wooden trestle was a thick sandstone wheel, about three feet in diameter, that spun in tune with the rotations of a winch. “One hand turns the crank while you hold the shears, just so, over the stone.”

James leaned the shears across the grindstone, applied pressure, and set to turning the crank. Instantly a terrible screeching ruptured the air, and he sprang back. “Well, I imagine that wasn’t right.”

Francis raised an eyebrow. “Not quite. If you’ll allow me?”

“You’d better, lest I whet the thing into shrapnel,” James said, handing them over. His breath quickened when he perceived that Francis had come to stand right behind him.

“Turn the crank while I hold them here.” Francis lay the shears down while James slowly worked the crank, which emitted a thin, scraping noise. “You must slide the shears a little as you go. Like this, see. Faster now.”

James assented, though his mind traveled elsewhere, to labor and landscapes of a more unsavory nature. The warmth emanating from Francis was intoxicating.

They toiled as one body until Francis said, “Give it another go on your own.” He plucked James’ free hand from the trestle beam and curled it around the shears’ handle, then rested his own atop it to brace James’ novice grip. “There.”

It was a miracle James managed to keep the operation stable. He shuddered with a nameless, grasping urgency; his head was thick and dense with whirling fog, his arms benumbed. When he spun the crank handle, it seemed heavier than the thirty two-pounders he’d trained on as a lieutenant.

Francis’ breath blew hot on the back of his neck. “Very good, James, keep going,” he said, tucking his thumb under James’ palm when shears and stone collided in a flash of sparks.

James prickled with shameful, blistering pleasure. Coaxed along by Francis’ praise and patient tutelage, he felt tended to. Cared for.

But it was not deliberate, nor did it signify anything. It could not. This was not Francis’ design—James knew it as surely as he knew the configuration of loops that produced a perfect bowline. And yet here he was, yielding to his basest impulses before a man of goodness and decency. A man who, for Christ’s sake, simply sought to instruct him in the fundamentals of cutling.

In that endless, droning orbit of the grindstone, James glimpsed the truth: he would not be free of this affliction while he remained here.

Secrets were the fabric of James’ whole miserable existence. He had kept this one long enough, and he could keep it still, spare Francis the indignity of knowing himself wanted by such a wretch.

But James could not spare himself. Every innocent brush of hands, every clapped shoulder raised the specter of his desire, which lingered long after the sensation faded, devouring him even in dreams. How could they continue in this fashion when even a smile sent arousal careening through James’ veins?

His duty was fulfilled. He had found Francis; they were brothers once more. James would fold up that happiness and stow it in his breast pocket, close to his heart, like wool trousers packed up in newspaper for an unending winter. Then he would go on, alone, as he’d always done. As he was meant to do.

“That should do it,” he said, halting his rotations.

Francis made no move to untangle himself; his hand still cocooned James’ in its heat.

James straightened and cleared his throat.

Francis gave a humble noise of apology, then stepped back. “Let’s to the field shelter,” he said. “I’ll show you how to shear properly. The sheep don’t mind getting shorn, if you can believe it. Very docile, like proper little ladies being dressed in the morning.”

“I’m afraid I’m feeling poorly. Might turn in for a bit inside.” The lie sat leaden in James’ chest. Guilt drove it deeper when he turned and caught the dismay that darted across Francis’ face.

“Well. Rest up, James,” Francis said, wiped clean of all sentiment in a blink. “I’ll look in on you when I’m done out here, hm?”

The air inside the house was stale and suffocating, bilious with the smell of turnips boiling for lunch. James loosened his cravat and took a long swallow of water from the jug in the pantry, but his discontent did not subside. Sighing, he slumped into the rocking chair before the hearth and stared, unseeing, into the fire.

Margaret swept into the sitting room, fresh from laundering their shirts. “All right, James?” _Captain Fitzjames_ had lasted all of three days. James had encouraged the familiarity as a manner of politeness at first, but he had since grown to enjoy Margaret’s company tremendously. She shared Francis’ ironical nature, which sometimes turned amusingly caustic after Sarah had gone to bed and they passed a pint of ale between them.

“Yes.” He offered Margaret his most agreeable smile. “Quite. It is only that I’ve received some rather unpleasant news from the navy, you see. Regrettably, I’ve been, ah—” What he said next would stain the rest of his days. It would be a loss of immense proportions—not only Francis, but the freedom of this little idyll, which had softened his griefs until they were nothing more than minuscule stars in the whole constellation of James’ life. “I’ve been called away on urgent business.”

“Oh, dear. When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow, I’m afraid. And I may be given another commission abroad posthaste.” Margaret’s face fell, and James knew himself a dreadful ingrate. “But I shall think upon my time here most fondly when I am off sailing to God knows where. I—” Some pesky mass was lodged in his throat. “I haven’t the words to express my gratitude. You have been ever so kind to me.”

Margaret placed a hand on his shoulder—a sisterly sort of gesture, the likes of which James had never known before but found he treasured very much indeed. “You’ve been a great help to us here, and we shall miss you. Frank won’t ever say it—you know how he is—but it’ll be a blow to him, make no mistake. He was in a bad way before you came. Trouble with the lady, I thought; our sister Eliza had told me all about that unhappiness before the expedition. In any case, he’d shown up on my doorstep so full of despair, it pained me and Sarah just to look at him moping about the place, never telling us what was eating at him. But since you came to us? A sea change, I swear to you. You’ve been a bosom friend to him, James, and I know he will miss you.”

“I am humbled, truly,” James said, bowing his head. His feelings and Francis’ odd caprices were too tangled up to unknot. It was better they parted ways amicably, as old friends who thought of each other sometimes when the seasons changed. Perhaps meet for tea next year if Francis was ever compelled to make the trip to London.

“The shearing go all right, Frank? One of those ewes has been giving me some trouble this week.”

James looked up.

Francis was knocking the muddy heels of his boots against each other in the doorway. “Aye, just fine. Storm’s brewing, though.” He combed the hair away from his forehead with a flick of his fingers. “I thought this one was ill and supposed to be abed?”

“James has had news from today’s post, so he tells me,” Margaret said. “He’s been called away.”

Three years sailing together had made James fluent in all the mechanisms Francis used to conceal his thoughts and feelings—none of which were particularly effective—so he immediately seized upon the way Francis’ face crumpled, then flattened into bland interest.

“Oh, has he now?”

“Indeed,” James said. “Rather sudden, but it can’t be helped.”

Francis did not speak while he retied the cravat that had come undone during the shearing. Then, with restrained indifference: “May I have a word outside, James?”

Behind the house, James stood with his arms crossed, observing Francis’ harried pacing from corner to corner of the stone yard.

Francis was right—a storm was in the offing. Overhead, a mass of grey-black clouds crept closer toward the farm. Bits and pieces of the landscape were irradiated in cold light from the last slivers of sun.

After he had traversed the yard a half-dozen times, Francis planted his hands on his hips and trained his eyes accusingly on James. “Whose orders?”

James shrugged. He refused to wilt under Francis’ winnowing gaze.

“I know you haven’t received any, James. What’s this about, then?”

“It’s time I took my leave. That’s all.”

A fine mist had begun to drizzle.

Francis tipped his head up toward the heavens and sighed. Mournfully, he said, “I cannot stop you, but I would know why, at least.”

In that cowed tone, James recognized a mirror of his own anguish at Francis’ departure months ago. It granted him a perverse helping of satisfaction. “Because I wish to,” he said. He no longer cared that he likely resembled a small child making a fuss over a bauble it had been denied. “That was good enough reason for you to leave London, wasn’t it?”

Francis grimaced. “It is not the same. I thought you were happy here.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Francis! You are so utterly—the most—Christ! I am out of words for you.” James threw his hands up and stalked past Francis, out of the yard, toward the hills at the far edge of the plot. He did not heed Francis shouting his name, only walked and walked until his shirt was rain-soaked and the wind had whipped his hair into disarray. When he had reached the summit of the first hill, some ten minutes from the house, he stopped and stood, still as a statue. The rain was pelting down now, and he desired nothing more than to drown in it.

“ _James_!”

James glanced back to see Francis trudging up the hill, a handful of paces from the summit. Puffing from his exertions, he wiped a spatter of rain from his forehead and called James’ name again. The wind was louder now, clamorous—it snatched at his voice, hurling it to James in flitters.

“Leave me be, Francis.”

“You mustn’t be out in this weather.” Francis took hold of James’ shoulders with firm, unyielding hands, even as James bucked and turned away. “It’s no good for your constitution.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn about my constitution,” James snapped, sodden and shivering in his shirtsleeves. “I am so tired, Francis. I cannot bear the fickle timetables of your friendship, which seem to follow no rhyme or reason. And you refuse to take me into your confidence— _me_ , your second, your closest companion on the ice.”

“I am sorry.” Francis stroked down the lengths of James’ arms, just as he had done to mollify that day at the cairn, but James scoffed and wriggled out of Francis’ grip.

“If you were sorry, you would not prevaricate so!”

Francis hung his head and spoke so faintly James could hardly hear him over the storm. “I know, James. I know I have done you wrong.”

But James forged on, roused by the strange, silvery thrill that accompanied flirtations with danger. “You were so changed in London. I would have understood if you’d merely been melancholic, in a cloister of your own making; I know you shouldered a far greater burden than the rest of us. But you wanted nothing to do with me. It felt as though you had decided, finally, that you found the taste of me abhorrent and spat me out.”

“James, no, I—”

“And I cannot stay here, but I know you will never return to London, so I am—I am at a loss,” James said, faster, stuttering in his desperation. “I cannot see how we can ever be true friends again. I would beg you to come home with me if I thought it’d do any good. Please, Francis, tell me what I did to drive you away. Please.” All the strength and spirit had been sapped from him. James sank to his knees, prostrate; tears began to brim under his lashes. When he blinked, they mingled with the rainwater in a measured descent down his cheeks. “I know I am vain and irritating and frivolous, but I would do anything in my power to mend it. Anything at all. I promise you. You need only tell me.” He pitched forward, clutching Francis around the knees, and pressed his face into Francis’ thigh. He could do nothing but weep; his back bowed and his body trembled with the violence of it.

From above, he heard Francis choke out his name like a laceration. Like some raw, sawtoothed syllable that cut up the inside of Francis’ mouth. Then there were cautious fingers combing through James’ hair where it lay plastered against his scalp.

“You have done nothing wrong,” Francis said. “I am the worst kind of coward.” His hand cupped James’ skull, shielding him from the rain, while his thumb traced slow circles underneath James’ ear. “I have feared your censure and your hatred, and it has made me unspeakably cruel. The truth is, when I quit the Rosses’ house, I had left long before that. Not London, I mean. I have been a traveler from myself for a while now. Turned inside out and about and around by you.”

“I don’t understand,” James said, sniffing. His whole being felt ponderous in its confusion—lashed to some immense weight, left to sink straight to sea bottom. He raised his head, clinging still to the trunks of Francis’ legs.

“My heart is a weak thing. It has been withered by disappointment too often.”

“Miss Cracroft?”

“Yes,” Francis said. “Miss Cracroft. As you know. I was so eager for her to be my wife; I’d pinned all my hopes on it. I see now how she was right to refuse me, how we would not have made a good pair.” He looked down at James, with just a hint of a smile. “But her refusals shattered me all the same. Made me mistrustful of myself. Doubtful that any happiness I could offer would ever be enough. And before her, I—” Francis stumbled, steeling himself, perhaps, though his thumb did not cease its circuits. “James Ross.”

“Oh,” James said. A blow—the breath punched out of him. He was dizzy with awakening, understanding.

“I did not name it to myself at the time. Ascribed the closeness I felt to the many trials we had endured together. But when he married Ann, I thought: _You could not keep him._ No matter that I had never told him. Our sailing together was not the life he wanted. What he wanted was a wife, a country house, packs of children and dogs. Whatever kind of love he held for me, it was not enough to stop him from retiring.”

“You loved him as you loved Miss Cracroft.”

“I did.” Then, drawing his thumb along the line of James’ jaw with tender reverence, he said, “And then—you.”

James closed his eyes.

“I should have been honest with you. I am sorry, James. I thought we could remain happily as friends. Yet when we returned and you spoke to me with such levity, about such trivial matters, after all we had been through, it seemed for the best to hide it all away. You were returning to your circle, me to mine. We lead different lives, and I would not imposition you that way, burden you with intolerable confessions. I thought my affections would fade with time, as they had before. But when they did not, I knew I could not survive it again—seeing you week after week, never telling you what you mean to me, risking the loss of your regard if I did. That final time we met, I was so convinced of our irreconcilable natures that I could not bear it any longer, and so I left. I will not ask for your forgiveness, which I do not deserve, but that is the full, unvarnished truth of it.”

The heaviness that had dragged James down to earth vanished, and in its place a curious lightness animated his being. The same lightness that had propelled his feet across _Pyramus_ ’ deck as he beheld the jeweled Atlantic, the bracing, briny smell of salt, the colossal tiers of canvas above him billowing in the wind. Her bow was a blade slicing through the ribbons of cresting waves with ease, and James—twelve years old, exhilarated, aflame with excitement—was certain that she could carry him anywhere. Somewhere far away, across the sea, there were unknown worlds waiting for him. A great, gilded life that could be built. All he had to do was reach out and take it.

James rose on strong, steady legs and studied Francis: pale, dripping, shamefaced. His eyes skittered across James’ face, awaiting condemnation.

The rain had reduced to a distant rumble under James’ skin. “You need not have feared, Francis,” he said, splaying his palm across Francis’ face. “Everything I have done, every brainless utterance and gin-soaked night on the tiles, was for want of you.” His thumb skirted the bridge of Francis’ nose while his smallest finger pressed into the hollow under Francis’ chin; the rest pillowed on the softness of Francis’ cheek.

They moved as if in a dream. When Francis swallowed, James’ hand shifted in congruence with the fluttering of his throat. And when James tilted his head and edged closer, Francis gave a tiny, hitched inhale that James smothered with his mouth.

It was not a kiss born from scarcity. James did not kiss like he was famished, like he was a man who had been starving on scraps and suddenly found himself dining on four courses. He did not coax Francis’ mouth open or slip his tongue inside, only savored the warmth in that brief press of lips, the transience that demanded nothing of him. It was a kiss that said: _I am here. You have me._

They broke apart. Far enough to sunder into two bodies again, close enough that their noses brushed when they exhaled as one. Plumes of humid breath swirled between them. Slowly, Francis covered James’ hand with his own and stroked the first knuckle of James’ index finger. “Do you—?”

“I do,” James said. “Beyond reason. God, I am _sick_ with it. I thought I would die when you left.”

Francis reached out with trembling, improbable fingers to trace the curve of James’ lower lip. He probed the seam above, and James opened to admit his thumb, sucked on its tip until Francis said, “ _James_ ,” flushing at the desirous rasp in his voice.

James slung his arms around Francis’ neck as Francis anchored his around James’ waist, and then they were kissing again—this time long, obscene, exploratory. James licked into the velvet interior of Francis’ mouth, earning a strangled gasp from Francis; he let Francis’ knee part his legs, and they fell into each other, scrabbling at ties and buttons.

All of a sudden, Francis withdrew—James leaned against him, chased the heat of his lips—and said, “James, I want, but—Not out here. The storm, I—” He shook his head, bewildered. Unmoored. Robbed of speech.

James had never seen him so.

He smiled at Francis, certain he was radiating joy, and Francis smiled back at him, showing all his teeth and that little gap James longed to taste. Then he gathered James’ hands between his palms and addressed James solicitously—pleaded with James, as though James was not bound to do Francis’ bidding, now and forever. “You’re soaked through, James. You must get warm by the fire. Please, come back with me to the house.” He raised their coupled hands to his lips and kissed James’ wet, frigid skin.

James could only follow.

* * *

The next hours were agony.

The storm confined them to the house, so they paced and roamed and took up idle, inessential tasks—anything to stave off the inextinguishable hunger that bubbled and burst into white-hot flame when they looked at each other. They hardly exchanged words, which to Margaret and Sarah must have stoked an illusion of friction in the face of James’ hasty departure, but James did not trust his own mouth to keep quiet, decent. When they took their places at the table for stew, James’ legs jittered with a restless, jumping energy he had not felt since boyhood. The toe of his boot knocked into Francis’ shin; he suppressed a sigh only by biting down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

After dinner, he and Francis donned their oilskin coats to round up the herd, drive them back into their pens. The rain had not abated, but redoubled its rhythm, lashing the ground and their backs like beating fists. The smell in the fields was fresh and earthy. Soil and grass and roots and leaves exhaled their full flavor, stirred up by the wind and water.

When the pens were closed and locked, crammed full of bleating sheep, James crowded Francis against the stone fencepost and kissed him again. Francis allowed himself to be pressed down, down, until his head lolled back and the curve of his spine flattened to meet the stone; James hovered over him, one hand propped against the post for ballast, one tangled in the damp straw of Francis’ hair.

They could not stop. Not when the storm surged to a thundering roar, or when they were blinded by the rain and lost their footing in the rising mud; not when the day’s second set of clothes had been soaked through.

Minutes, hours, eternities—James could not perceive the difference—vanished this way. Heat turned to steam that evaporated in the storm. Eventually, he said, “We ought to go back. They’ll be looking for us,” and righted himself.

Francis turned his face up toward the rain. “Bleeding hell, James. This is madness.”

“It is,” James said, wiping puddles from the shoulders of his coat. “I shall go mad if I do not have you, Francis.”

“I know,” Francis groaned. “I know. Soon, I promise you.”

After they had returned to the house and dried themselves by the fire, they said their goodnights in dry, cracked tones. James had no hope of sleeping, so he gathered the sheets around his waist, slipped a hand under his nightshirt, and touched himself, thinking of Francis, as he had done a hundred, a thousand times. Before, he had relied on conjecture, the memory of fleeting touches, vague and shadowy impressions from ships and tents. Now, stroking himself, he remembered the scrape of Francis’ stubble, the texture of his lips, how he moaned when kissed long and hard. He imagined how Francis might sound with lips wrapped around his cock, fingers flicking at his nipples.

James’ lips, James’ fingers.

James’ muscles all seized up and he came, muffling his gasps into a fist. Then he fell into a dark, dreamless sleep—the kind that had eluded him since he had first heard the name _Francis Crozier_.

* * *

James woke at the click of a turning doorknob.

Francis stood in the doorway, bathed in the crepe-pink light of daybreak that burnished his hair gold.

“You look very well this morning,” James murmured, yawning. He raised himself onto his elbows and blinked the muzziness from his eyes. “What is it?”

“Margaret and Sarah have gone to town to fetch you a dogcart for later. They shouldn’t be back before lunch; Sarah needs a new dress, and Margaret tooth powder from the chemist’s.”

Taking Francis’ meaning, James fought the flush rising along his neck. “I see.”

“I did not get a wink of sleep. My mind was all in a flurry.” Francis closed the door and leaned against it. The beginnings of a blush stained his cheeks, too. “May I?”

“Good God, Francis. I think we are beyond courtliness and propriety, don’t you?”

“I would court you, James,” Francis sounded as earnest as a boy with his first sweetheart. “Treat you as the prize you are. Give you all that you deserve.”

James’ face had gone fully scarlet. “Your charm will get you into trouble one of these days, sir.” Already his interest had begun to stir, and he could not conceive of another moment spent mapping the chart of Francis with his eyes alone. He sculpted all the infinite contours of his longing into one impulse and said Francis’ name—inquiringly, as though gentling a skittish horse.

Francis ducked his head, bashful, but still he did not approach the bed. At length, he said, “I am not afraid. Of you, or myself, or any of this. And I do not doubt what you feel, either, but the fact of that is so very new to me. I had not dared to imagine.” He favored James with a rueful smile. “I have loved before, but not been loved. Not truly. Not to last.”

James supposed he was much the same. He had not been loved before, either, if love was laying all he had, all he _was_ , at another’s feet—if love was placing his neck on the block for slaughter and awaiting deliverance. He only had known company that was never meant to last: men in brothels, alleyways, back rooms, filthy ship’s underbellies where no light seeped through. “I intend to love you with every breath left in this battered body, Francis. You have my word.”

“You are not battered, James. You are hale and whole, and you are _here_ , alive. I could never have come back to England without you,” Francis said, coming to kneel at the edge of the bed. His knuckles were waxed white where they gripped the bedpost. “So I make the same pledge to you.”

James’ heart flapped about pathetically in his chest. He sprang from the bed, seized Francis about the shoulders, and kissed him deeply. For a moment, Francis was pliable as clay in his hands; then, he spun James around and shoved him against the wall, fitting their bodies together from tip to toe. James scrabbled for purchase in Francis’ nightshirt.

“God, I _want_ —” James said, breathless, though he did not know what he wanted. Everything, perhaps. The enormity of his desire would be diminished in speech, reduced to a handful of words that signified only base bodily arrangements. He wanted so much he could die of it. For their skin to kiss, every inch of it. For Francis to touch him for as long as they walked this earth.

“Whatever you like,” Francis said, nipping along James’ jaw, but James could only moan, rapturous, when Francis brushed his lips across James’ neck, licked over the thrumming pulse there, sucked a bruise into the skin.

James grabbed fistfuls of Francis’ hair, that untidy cornsilk, and threw his head back, panting so loudly he feared the next farm over could hear. “Closer.” When Francis’ lips reached the base of James’ throat, he dipped his tongue into the hollow there and lapped gently. With a wild exhale, James propped his leg up against Francis’ side and crooked it around his waist, pressing himself closer to the swellings of Francis’ cock under his nightshirt.

“Oh.” Francis’ breath was damp on James’ neck. “Yes.” He took hold of James’ hips and said into James’ ear, “Your other leg.” Before James could protest, Francis had hefted him up against the wall. James’ eyes widened in delight. He wrapped both legs around Francis so that his ankles crossed at the small of Francis’ back, with his weight split between Francis under him and the stone behind him.

He looked down at Francis, whose mouth was plotting a slick trail of spit back up James’ neck, and cupped Francis’ cheek in his palms when Francis answered his gaze. “You marvel,” he said, knowing very well he sounded stupidly, incurably fond. Yet he did not care a whit. In Francis’ hands—strong, sturdy, just as roughed as James’ own—James was a small and precious thing. Francis would never let him fall.

“Lighter than a sheep,” Francis grunted.

They jolted at the first brush of their cocks together. James gasped; Francis dug his thumbs deeper into James’ arse, where James knew he would discover a series of sweetly flowering contusions the next day. He would permit them—catalogue them, rapt, as proof that his incalculable wanting had its twin in Francis.

Under James’ nightshirt, sweat beaded down his spine and behind his knees. His cock ached, untouched save for the rare instances when their hips aligned. Ordinarily he liked to draw out his pleasure slowly, luxuriate in those louche and libertine instincts that overtook him in bed, but he had been deprived for too long now. A furnace had been lit inside him, deep in his belly and between his legs. “Francis, Christ, have mercy,” James said. “Please, touch me. Anything. _Please_.”

Francis seemed far more intent on stamping every bit of bare skin above the collar of James’ nightshirt with his lips and teeth and tongue. “I will, I will,” he said, distracted.

James’ chest heaved. He tugged at Francis’ hair when flickers of light danced and popped under his eyelids. “Francis, I can’t—”

Once more, Francis kissed the column of James’ throat, where he had scattered a dozen bites and bruises, then retreated. He studied James curiously. His eyes were ablaze with hunger, but gentleness, too, that signaled the care he would take with James. “We have time. Hush now, hm? Just—just let me.”

They kissed again. James licked into Francis’ mouth, eliciting a series of low moans, and surrendered to his command. He was drunk on Francis’ kisses—he wanted to bottle them up and sip from them whenever he pleased.

After a spell, Francis tightened his hold around James and hoisted him aloft; he turned and set off toward the bed. James flung his arms around Francis’ neck, tucked his face into the hideaway of Francis’ shoulder, and let Francis deposit him atop the linens. “Lie with me,” he said, already wriggling out of his nightshirt.

Francis climbed onto the bed and set a knee on either side of James’ thighs, bracketing him, as James tossed the shirt aside and lay back. His eyes roved across the planes and dips of James’ body hungrily.

Bare, ripe for inspection, James shivered. The scrutiny did not chasten him—no, he felt wrung dry, renewed, like he’d wept for hours and emerged with freshness and clarity. He would bear the force of Francis’ gaze on him for as long as Francis sought to look. Urge Francis to drink his fill.

“I dream of you so often,” Francis murmured, skating his knuckles across James’ ribs. “I wake and see you making tea or chopping wood or tending to the sheep, and you are more beautiful than my dreams. Luminous in the sun. Sometimes I can hardly breathe for the shock.”

Humbled, astonished, James laced their fingers together and set their entwined hands in a knot over his heart.

Then, as heat stirred between his legs once more, he arched his back and tilted his head to set off the severe lines of his jaw and shoulder. It was a bit of coquetry that had worked on practically every man he had bedded before, and he thrilled to see the black of Francis’ pupils overtake his irises.

“The way you look, it would drive a saint to sin,” Francis said, rough as glass paper on wood. He pressed the heel of his hand against the swollen outline of his cock and let out an impatient groan. James set his own hand atop Francis’ and kneaded until the fabric was wet with darkening stains.

The unknowable map of Francis’ body had preoccupied James’ imagination for years. Now, as he tugged the hem of Francis’ nightshirt up, over Francis’ head, his throat went dry at the sight of Francis revealed to him. The breadth of Francis’ shoulders. The pinprick clusters of freckles that began at the base of his neck and sprinkled down to his elbows. The curves of muscle in his arms, which proved firm under James’ speculative touch.

Leisurely, Francis planted his forearms on the bed, draping himself over James, slotting the jumble of their legs into a tidy configuration. The weight of him was dense and comforting—an old, well-loved quilt. But the way he pinned James’ limbs in place made James feel quite like a rabbit caught in a hunter’s trap.

“You like this?” Francis said, in between kisses as James went limp, boneless.

James wound his fingers in Francis’ hair. “So very much,” he said, pressing his hips up to meet Francis’. Their cocks slid together, swimming in the fluid leaking from their tips. “God, Francis, the things I wish to do to you.”

“Tell me.”

“Have you take me, for one.”

Francis swore and drove his hips vigorously against James’. “It’s good?”

“Oh, more than good,” James said, languorous. They had time. Time enough to have each other every which way, on every surface, inside and in the sunshine alike. “An art perfected by the Greeks in which I shall happily instruct you. Make you put your fingers in me first, though. Then sit on your lap and let you fill me up.”

“Yes,” Francis breathed. “Yes, yes.”

“I’d do it to you if you wanted. It is divine, Francis, you, ah—” James jerked when the tip of his cock grazed Francis’ belly. “Put my mouth on your cock, too. Stroke you till you cried.”

Francis shuddered. “James, for God’s sake.” But his thrusts did not falter even as the bed creaked.

They fell into a steady rhythm. In due course, Francis’ mouth wandered to James’ nipples. James had never paid particular consideration to them before, but as Francis licked them with an insatiable curiosity, they puffed and swelled, their points made tight and sharp. He gasped when Francis latched the seal of his mouth around one and bit down, hard.

James never skirted this knife’s edge of pleasure so precariously before. He longed to find his release, coat himself in Francis’ spend; he wanted to draw it out for hours and hours, until they were ruined, sweat-drenched. But between Francis’ mouth and the slippery friction of their cocks, James was nearly there. At the next feverish jerk of Francis’ hips, he squeezed his legs around Francis’ waist and dug his heels into Francis’ back to drive him on faster.

“Close,” Francis said, ragged. He bent down to kiss James again. When they parted, Francis did not lever himself up, but remained there, skimming the tip of his nose against James’, letting their breaths mingle. Then he wrapped a hand around both of them and tugged frantically.

James took in a helpless, gasping gulp of air. For a moment, he was immobile—dangling from the towering heights of pleasure, poised to plummet. Francis said, “James, Jesus _Christ_ ,” and buried his face in James’ shoulder with a moan.

Thinking of dirt under his fingernails and a brilliant blue sky, James clasped the back of Francis’ neck and let himself fall.

They lay still for a time. As sight and sense returned to him, James listened to the wind rustling beyond the house. He shifted, heedless of the stickiness caught between their bellies, and stretched.

Francis let out a low, grousing sound and did not move.

James smiled. “All well?” he asked, ruffling Francis’ hair.

Francis peered up at him, bleary-eyed, resting his chin on James’ breastbone. The liquid look of love Francis lavished upon him made James’ eyes sting. “You know, Francis, I have the strangest feeling,” he said, heart in his throat.

“Oh?”

“I feel as though I’ve fallen out of bed from a long and weary dream. Startled, but unburdened. Quite free, in fact. Like I could float away.”

Francis rose up and kissed James’ forehead. “Then I shall keep you tethered here,” he said.

After they had wiped themselves clean, they settled against the headboard together. Francis half-reclining on the pillows, James draped across his lap, his head on Francis’ shoulder—so close that James did not know where he ended and Francis began. While all was silent, James savored the warmth of Francis tucked around him. Then, at a far-off bleating from the herd, he sighed and said, “When are they due back?”

Francis squinted at the angle of the sun through the open window. “Perhaps an hour from now. The cart should come at three.”

“Damn!” James had forgotten all about yesterday’s hurts, which seemed a lifetime ago. All that was long gone, left behind on distant shores; now, he sailed on the tailwinds of Francis’ affections. “It was awfully pigheaded of me, but I saw no other way to extricate myself from that pickle you’d got me in.”

He did not have to see Francis’ face to know that Francis’ brow had winged upward. “The pickle _I_ got you in?”

“You were doing your damndest to seduce me with that grindstone, you horrid man,” James said, swatting Francis’ arm when Francis laughed. “But I will not leave you, do you hear? I shall remain on this farm as long as you do. There is nothing that keeps me in London now.”

“James, I—” Francis sighed. “I came here because I was fearful and frightened. I was fleeing you, your power over me. Only that. If you wish to make your home in London again, I will accompany you.”

“Well, for now, send the cart away when it arrives.” James’ mind was buzzing with possibility. “We must think on our plans.”

In the languid heat of the noon sun, however, they soon fell into a doze. James woke some time later to a hand threading through his hair.

“Very soft,” Francis said, contemplative.

James hummed, rubbing his cheek against Francis’ chin. Francis’ hand persisted in its caresses, first sweeping across James’ shoulder blades, then down his arm. His touch was feather-light, infinitely tender.

James closed his eyes, drifting closer to sleep again, and spoke into Francis’ chest. “God, I love your hands.”

At the hitch in Francis’ breath, James tensed and wondered if he had done wrong, though he could not imagine how. But Francis only resumed his stroking and said, “My lamb,” so quietly it could have wafted up to the rafters and soared away if James had not caught it. But James would guard it carefully between his palms. Keep it safe, sacred.

“Yes,” he said, twisting up to press his lips against Francis’. “Yours.”

* * *

The ten o’clock from Dunmurry to Cavan was nearly full.

While Francis packed their luggage into the narrow compartment overhead, James took the seat nearest the window and folded his hands across his lap. “The rooms will be ready in time for our arrival tomorrow afternoon?” he asked. “I suppose Sir James and Lady Ann could put us up if not.”

Francis settled next to him. “Ah, yes. I received Ann’s latest in town while you were hiring a coach. She says Miss Walton left for Edinburgh yesterday.”

“Excellent,” James said, laying his hand on Francis’ thigh. It was too close for propriety, but he could remove it any time he liked were a porter to duck into their carriage. At any rate, he was quite willing to submit to the bullish, boyish elation that coursed through his veins.

Life had been many things for James in his thirty-five years. Bruising, lately, at the prospect of spending the rest of it unseen, alone, bedeviled by an ache that could not be soothed. Now, with Francis beside him, it seemed so very sweet.

The fire of their first union had cooled these three weeks past, tempered by an appetite for the future. For every kiss they could not steal, every morning they could not wake together, they told each other: _We have time._ Soon they would be installed in a household of their own.

After Francis had written to Sir James of their plans to return to London, Lady Ann had offered them the use of her friend Miss Walton’s residence, a townhouse in Marylebone that would be empty while its occupants summered in Scotland. When September came, they would have to rent rooms, but James was not sure where the winds of fortune would take them. Accepting a new commission from the Admiralty was out of the question, naturally, and James intended to submit his formal resignation once they reached London. He reckoned somewhere warm for the winter: Spain, Portugal, a tour of the Greek islands.

And, to his great surprise, James found that he did not dislike the thought of turning farmer once more. With the hundred pounds a year William had given him, he had enough to buy a small plot somewhere that would be his and Francis’. A score of sheep, some chickens, a cow; fresh milk in the mornings and companionable quiet in the evenings. A sanctum of grass and stone tucked away in the hills, where they would never be found or bothered again. Under their hands—always entwined, together—the land would grow and thrive and yield new life.

James splayed his fingers against the windowpane and looked out. Marshes and meadows hurtled by in a vivid blur. “Were you unhappy leaving this morning?”

“How do you mean?”

“Your sister and Sarah. The farm.”

Francis’ brow creased. “I have not much seen my brothers and sisters since I was a boy, but Margaret and I were always close. Well, close as siblings could be in a family of thirteen. And Sarah is a very lively girl. It was good to have their company while I was brooding, as you can imagine.” He tipped his head back. “As for the farm, I suppose. I like the work. It suits me. Certainly it is free from all the politicking I always resented having to endure in the navy, and it is good to have an occupation in my retirement. But truly, James, I am not unhappy at all.” His voice softened to a hush. “I am happy to be wherever you are. That is what guides me now.”

James folded their hands together and stroked the skin of Francis’ palm with his thumb. “Yes, of course, Francis,” he said. “I am the same. But I should like a farm of our own, even if it means I must dispose of my entire wardrobe and wear only homespun linen for the rest of my days. We could make a good go of it, I think.”

“What a dreadful sacrifice,” Francis said, smiling. “I would like that.” He spared a glance for the closed door of their carriage, then darted in to kiss James. When he withdrew, his mouth flattened into a solemn line. “I am so very grateful you found me, James. You have been brave where I could not be.”

“Oh, tosh, Francis. You are brave in loving me, and in allowing me the great privilege of loving you. You, my dear man, have made me perfectly content.” James’ throat tightened at the sight of Francis’ eyes shining, and a nameless sensation, terrifying in its immensity, swelled within him. But when he held it up to the sunlight soaking their carriage, he saw it for what it was.

Happiness had taken wing within him. In his giddiness, James fancied that, perhaps, he and Francis were in fact the inventors of the feeling—surely no one on earth had ever been this happy before.

The cold and the ice and the dark were no more. At long last, there was sun and spring and all things green and growing, and at the end of it all, there was Francis.

**Author's Note:**

> Now with [exquisitely beautiful art by amatlapal](https://amatlapal.tumblr.com/post/637252514877702145/art-of-icicaille-s-so-much-spring-which-you-can)!
> 
> Title is excerpted from "[I Feel So Much Spring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfX9P24Cu8)," a beautiful tune from the musical _A New Brain_ whose general conceit served as a thematic linchpin for this fic. Other influences include "Separator" by Radiohead (you'll know it when you see it), Elizabeth Lowry's _Dark Water_ , and Thomas Hardy's _Far From the Madding Crowd_.
> 
> Many thanks to both [Cee](https://twitter.com/witchwifes) for looking this over, acting as my supreme farm guru, and generally cheerleading me through this whole process, and [Kay](https://twitter.com/himbodundy) for patiently, lovingly putting up with my constant shit as always.


End file.
